SEO Audit: Check Your Website’s SEO Performance and Identify Areas for Improvement

What is an SEO Audit?

SEO Audit is the process in which an expert evaluates your website. They check whether your website is correctly optimized to appear at the top of SERPs or Search Engine Result Pages.

Now you know what is an SEO Audit. But what factors do these experts analyze? There are many aspects that they look into, including the technical set-up of your site, on-page optimization, as well as off-page factors.

Why SEO Audits? The reason is simple. An audit will help you identify where you lack. It will uncover those aspects of your website that need to be worked upon to improve the ranking on search engines.

Once you identify what you need to improve and take the necessary steps, you will observe more traffic on your website, resulting in increased sales. Hence, an audit for checking the search engine optimization of your website is a small but necessary step to ensure you get better leads and better ROI in the future!

Why Are SEO Audits Necessary?

The reason behind the popularity of SEO Audits is simple - enhanced rankings, increased traffic, more leads, and hence better revenue. Why are SEO audits necessary? Because they help see the problems that are hindering the above-stated benefits.

Let us take the example of a boutique shop. Suppose you own a boutique and want everyone to see your outlet's name first when they search "boutiques near me." (Here, boutiques near me is a keyword).

You can hire a professional SEO audit expert from a good firm like Apex Infotech, who will suggest changes to your existing website. Let's say you have not correctly used the keyword "boutiques near me" in your website content. Or maybe the speed of your website is too slow, causing visitors to close that tab and go to a faster one.

Now, when you get these problems fixed with the help of an SEO company, you will see success walking toward you. How? If someone is searching "boutiques near me", your business will appear at the top of their screen. You will hence get more traffic, leads, and conversions. Great right?

Here's a look at some of the reasons why a boutique shop must hire SEO auditors:

• You get your website designed and developed once. But the world of SEO keeps evolving by the minute. So, to keep updating your website as per the latest guidelines, you need to conduct periodic SEO Audits. As a result, your website will be better optimized for search engines like Google.
• There are many factors that will affect the SEO of your website. And usually, these factors are dynamic, like content, structure, technical elements, and performance. To make sure all these things are right all the time, you need SEO Audits.
• SEO Auditors not only analyze your weaknesses but also identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor's websites. This helps you understand what you need to do and what you do not in order to be better than everyone else in the industry.
• An SEO audit company can also help you with analytics. This way, you can track your progress over time and make improvements wherever necessary. If a change in SEO strategy is required, the experts at companies like ours can also help you develop it.

Hence, if you are willing to take your boutique shop business to the next level, hiring a good SEO agency to conduct audits is best for you. You will be able to improve your digital presence with the help of this SEO service.

Benefits of SEO Audits for boutique shops and other businesses:

• Improved Technical Performance: If there are any technical problems from the development end of your website, like load speed, our SEO audit experts can identify those and guide you with the troubleshooting measures. Fixing technical SEO will enhance the visibility of your website very easily.

• Better On-Page SEO: On-page SEO involves the optimization of your website's content, its keywords, titles, meta descriptions, etc. When these elements are taken care of, it becomes easier for your site to rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs).

• Build Backlinks: When there are enough backlinks on your website from other websites, Google sees you as a better candidate to get a higher ranking.

• Track SEO Performance Periodically : When you conduct SEO audits on a regular basis, you ensure that your website is optimized as per the latest trends in the world of search engine optimization. If your website is not performing as you anticipated, you can take the advice of SEO experts and make adjustments as and when needed.

So, if you are willing to get all these benefits, come to Apex Infotech. Our expert SEO Auditors will use their experience and knowledge to help you rank higher on search engines.

What Are The Types of SEO Audits?

Now that you know what SEO audits are and why they are important, you must be eager to know what are the types of SEO audits. Read on to find out!

Following are the different types of SEO audits that we can conduct for you.

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Technical SEO

Let us have a look at these 3 types of SEO audits in the following sections:

• On-Page SEO: On-page search engine optimization is basically related to the content and the structure of your website. These factors majorly affect the ranking of your site on search engine result pages. On-page SEO includes aspects like keyword usage, meta titles, and descriptions, as well as the use of title tags on your website and its content.

• Off-Page SEO: Off-page search engine optimization involves the various backlinks directed to your website. These also affect the ranking of your site on the search engine. But what are backlinks? The links from other websites to yours are known as backlinks. Backlinks serve as a sign of authority in the eyes of search engines. As a result, they can contribute to increasing the ranking of your site.

• Technical SEO: The technical aspects of your website that affect its ranking on SERPs are referred to as technical SEO. What does technical seo include? It includes various factors like the crawlability, load speed, and indexing of your website, among many others.

On-page Audit

On-page SEO is much more than optimizing your content for reader retention. Moreover, it is not only writing content that meets the search intent. So what exactly does this SEO service cover? It includes optimizing your web page to its core, involving page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and images. You do this with respect to the primary keyword for which you wish to rank high on the search engines.

As a result of the optimization of these individual factors, the chances of your website to ranking higher are enhanced. Furthermore, you will encounter more organic traffic.

Let us comprehend this with the aid of an example. Suppose you have written the best content in all aspects. But your title and headings are not optimized. In such situations, your site will not rank well on SERPs.

Why so? Because on-page SEO audit services also include making your website and its content easy to understand for all human visitors and crawlers. They are able to do this effortlessly when you take care of search engine optimization. And when humans and search engines understand your content and the information presented in it, the chances are high that they will click on your link. This brings a rise in traffic on your website.

Let us now have a look at some of the most important pointers of on-page SEO audits:

• Keyword Analysis: Keyword Analysis involves the identification of the keywords and phrases you must target if you wish to rank better on search engines.
• Meta Tag Optimization: The various snippets of code that searchers can see on the Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs are known as Meta Tags. Meta tag optimization involves aspects like keywords, meta descriptions, as well as title tags. The most vital of all meta tags is the title tag. This is because it is the primary text that visitors see on the SERPs. And the text that appears below the title tag - the meta description - is also extremely important.
• Header Tags Optimization: The HTML tags that grant a structure to the content on your site are known as header tags. As a result of header tags optimization, you will be able to clearly demonstrate the significance of the different sections present in your content. The most primary of all header tags is H1, designated to your web page's main heading.
• Content Optimization: Content Optimization refers to the optimization of all the written content on your site for search engines. Various practices are involved in this process, like, the use of the right keywords, refraining from the use of duplicate content, and writing content that is not only informative but also engaging for the audience.
• Image Optimization: Image optimization refers to the optimization of all the images on your website for search engines. Various practices are involved in this process, like, the use of correct names for files, optimization of pages to increase their speed, and addition of alt text to each image on your website.
• Open Graph Tags (OG Tags) Optimization: If you are willing to let social media platforms know about the content on your website, then you must use OG tags. As a result, when people are scrolling through their social media feeds, your content is more likely to appear there.
• Schema Markup Code Optimization: If you want search engines to understand your website's content, you need to use a special code. This code is referred to as Schema Markup. As a result, the content of your website will be more effectively visible on search engines.
• HTML Code Optimization for Schemas: If you wish to optimize the HTML code of your website for schemas, you need to opt for HTML code optimization for schemas. But what exactly does this include? Various measures, such as giving the right attributes to your tags as well as the usage of correct tags for schema markup.
• Internal Linking Pages With Proper Anchor Texts: When you link a particular page of your website with the rest of the pages on your site, the process is termed as internal linking. When done right, internal linking can be an asset that helps search engines crawl and index your website to a better extent. Moreover, internal linking allows your visitors to conveniently navigate your website.
• Resolving 404 Errors (Broken Links): When someone tries to access a specific page, but the page is not available, it is known as a 404 error. Such broken links can negatively impact the SEO of your website. This is because they are an indication of a poorly maintained website.
• Creation and Uploading of sitemap.xml: A file that tells the search engines about the different pages present on your website is known as a sitemap. If you want to enhance the way search engines crawl and index your site, you need to use sitemaps correctly.
• Creation and Uploading of KML Sitemap: A file that informs the search engines about the location of the different pages present on your website is known as a KML sitemap. Google Apps like Google Maps and Google Earth use KML sitemaps.
• Optimization of robots.txt and Google Bot Crawls: A file that informs the search engines about which pages on your website they're allowed to crawl and which pages they aren't allowed to crawl is known as a robots.txt file. When you edit and optimize this file, you can ensure that all the important pages on your site are crawled.
• Google Analytics Setup: A free tool used by many businesses across the globe to track the traffic on their websites, Google Analytics helps you understand the way people come to your website. Moreover, it helps you analyze how your audience is interacting with the content on your site.
• Google Search Console Setup: A free tool used by many businesses across the globe to manage the presence of their website on Google's search results, Google Search Console helps you keep track of the rankings of your website. Moreover, it helps you identify any existing problems or errors and rectify them.
• Link Redirect Audit: The process in which you can check the links of your website to ensure that they are operating correctly is known as link redirect. A link redirect audit includes auditing all your links to identify broken ones (if any). It also helps to ensure that the links of your website are all redirecting to the desired pages.
• Canonicalization Analysis and Domain Unification: The process in which you inform the search engines about the original version of a specific web page is known as canonicalization. But why is canonicalization essential? Because you have to prevent problems related to duplicate content. Next, the process of ensuring that all the pages of your website are live on the same domain is termed domain unification. The primary purpose of domain unification is to enhance the search engine optimization of your website.
• Checking HTTPS/SSL Certificate: An SSL certificate is a certificate of security that encrypts the data propagated between your website and its users. It is a measure taken by many websites to ensure that the data of their visitors is safe and that the website is secure to use.
• Mobile Site Optimization: The process of making your website compatible to operate and appear on mobile devices is known as mobile optimization. In an era where an increasing part of the population is relying on mobile devices to conduct searches on the internet, mobile site optimization has become extremely essential for businesses across different industries.

Website Speed Audit: One of the most crucial factors affecting the SEO of your website is the speed at which it loads. A slow-loading site is vulnerable to being penalized by search engines. What does this mean? If your website is penalized because of slow loading speed, it will not appear higher on the search engine result pages.

Off-Page Audit

Off-page search engine optimization involves every action that is happening outside your own website. What does this include? Let's have a look:

• Links coming from external websites to yours
• Responding to messages and comments of your followers on social media handles like Instagram and Facebook
• Requesting various third-party websites to mention your website to enhance promotional efforts

When you take the above-states steps as a business, you are proving that your website is values by others. As a result, your website and its content become more eligible in the eyes of search engines to be ranked higher. And the benefits you can reap from a better ranking on SERPs is no secret!

The factors affecting SEO change often, and hence the landscape is all the more competitive for businesses striving to establish their presence on the internet. While everyone else is busy taking care of the on-page aspect of SEO, if you focus on off-page optimization, you'll have a better shot at success. Hence, hiring an off-page audit specialist might just be the step that distinguishes you from your competitors and puts you ahead of them.

Let us now have a look at some of the most important pointers of off-page SEO audits:

• Backlink Analysis: Backlink analysis refers to the analysis of the various links pointing to your website's pages. This includes not only a quantitative analysis but also a qualitative one. This step is crucial because backlinks signify the trustworthiness and authority of your website and hence are extremely important for SEO.

• Social Media Presence: Social media is ruling the world. And if you wish for your business to flourish, having a strong social media presence is essential. You have to take care of the number of followers, the engagement rate, as well as the number of people who liked and shared your posts. But why is social media presence important for SEO? Because it helps you attract a wide range of audience and also enhances your brand's reputation.

• Online Reputation Management: Online reputation management refers to the process in which you manage your website's presence on the Internet. What all does this practice involve? Checking mentions, replying to reviews, and ensuring the incorrect information about your business is rectified. Moreover, this practice helps improve your ranking on SERPs and attract more organic traffic to your site. Hence, it is essential for SEO.

• Local SEO: Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website and its content for local searches. Hence, you must add location-specific keywords to your content, ensuring your business is listed on local directories and optimizing your profile on Google My Business.

• Brand Mentions: When your site is mentioned on other good websites, it is called brand mention. There are many ways to achieve brand mentions - guest posting, social media platforms, etc. These mentions are essential if you wish to improve your brand's reputation and increase the number of visitors to your site. Hence, they are important for search engine optimization.

• Community Engagement: Community engagement refers to the process through which you interact with your followers and visitors of your site. You can leverage the power of forums, social media platforms, or other channels to achieve this. Why is this important for SEO? Because it helps you attract more links and hence improves your brand reputation.
• Review Ratings: When you gain positive reviews about your business, service, products, or your website as a whole, your ratings shoot up. Reviews can be present on social media or various review sites. When you're rated better through more positive reviews, your ranking enhances, and you get more traffic.

Technical Audits

Technical audits refer to the practices that analyze the various technical elements that impact the SEO of a website. Why technical site audits? Because they ensure that search engines are successfully able to crawl and index your web pages. This helps you rank higher on SERPs. When you conduct regular technical SEO audits with the help of a professional SEO company like Apex Infotech India, you can identify any technical issues that may be causing the poor performance of your site on search engines like Google. And once these problems are identified, you can also fix them with the help of experts and yield better results.

Let us now have a look at some of the most important pointers of technical SEO audits:

• Spot and Fix Crawlability and Indexability Issues: This is one of the most essential steps and involves analyzing robots.txt issues and fixing them. It also invoices checking for and fixing XML sitemap issues. These are the issues that usually prevent the crawling and indexing of search engines on your website.
• Audit Your Site's Architecture: Your site's architecture includes everything from site hierarchy and URL structure to navigation and much more. And when you get audits performed once in a while, you ensure that your website is optimized right for each engine to crawl and index.
• Fix Internal Linking Issues: This step involves checking that all internal links are working fine and fixing the broken ones (if any). Moreover, it also involves fixing other issues, such as orphaned pages that might bring down your website's rank on SERPs.
• Spot and Fix Duplicate Content Issues: This step involves the identification of multiple versions of the same page and fixing them. This is basically done by analyzing the various URL parameters that can lead to duplication of content and pages and other similar issues.
• Audit Your Site's Performance: The performance of a website depends on a variety of factors, like mobile-friendliness, loading speed, etc. Auditing your site's performance involves fixing problems such as poor UI, slow load times, etc., so as to ensure that the SEO of your website is above par.
• Discover Issues With Mobile-Friendliness: The importance of mobile-friendliness of websites has increased multifold since the world is switching to mobile devices to search for information online. Mobile-friendliness basically refers to the capability of your website to perform well on mobile devices. Factors affecting it include tap targets, responsive designs, compatibility with a few common mobile browsers, loading speed, and readability of text, among many others.
• Spot and Fix Code Issues: In this step, professional SEO auditors will identify and fix issues related to meta tags, hreflang attributes, canonical tags, structured data, JavaScript, and CSS. All these issues significantly affect the SEO of your website and hence should be fixed as soon as possible.
• Check for and Fix HTTPS Issues: HTTPS issues involve problems related to mixed content, etc. These affect your website's ranking; hence, you must hire a top SEO company to fix these problems.
• Find and Fix Problematic Status Codes: In this step, the status codes that impact the SEO of your website, like 3XX status codes, 4XX status codes, and 5XX status codes, are identified and fixed.
• Perform Log File Analysis: If there are any technical issues in your website's log file, its search engine optimization may suffer heavily. Hence, performing a log file analysis with the help of an SEO audit company is necessary.
• Content Auditing: When you choose content auditing from a reputed company like Apex Infotech India, you encounter the following steps:
  • Define Your Goals: To begin with SEO content audit, the first step it to understand what you aim to achieve from it. Once you know what you need, it is better to communicate with SEO agencies. Your goals can be anything – improved SEO results, better customer experience, or even enhanced conversion rates.
  • Collect and Analyze Data: Once the goals are defined, the SEO audit specialists will collect the data related to your content and its performance. Once they have access to this information, they will analyze it to assess your current situation.
  • Create an Action Plan: The next step involves making a plan of action. This is a result of the combined efforts of yours and our team. This plan will primarily focus on solving the issues that came up during the content auditing process.
  • Making Changes to Your Content Marketing Strategy: As a final step, the experts from Apex Infotech India will suggest a few changes in your existing content marketing strategy. Why? Because we want you to get all the benefits of SEO.

Local SEO Audit

The following is a list of the different services that a local SEO audit encloses:

• Examine your Google Business Profile: The first step in the local SEO audit involves ensuring that your Google Business Profile is complete as well as accurate.
• Explore Google Penalties: Next, we check if there are any penalties by Google on your website that may negatively impact the SEO of your site.
• Check Your Keyword Targeting: At Apex, we also check the keyword targeting of your website because we understand that only when you're targeting the right keywords, you'll be able to win at local SEO.
• Search for Duplicate Pages: After keywords, we also check if there are any duplicate pages on your website because their presence means that your website is not correctly optimized.
• Test Your Landing Pages for Crawlability: This step involves testing the landing pages of your website to check whether it is crawlable for search engines.
• Pay Attention to Engagement Metrics: Analytics and numbers are essential tools to understand how well the visitors are engaging with your website. These metrics involve various aspects, from clicks to calls.
• Review Ratings and Feedback: Feedbacks, ratings, and reviews from customers and users are extremely important. They help you see where you lack and work towards improving it.

Link Audit

There are many practices included in a link audit needs? Here is a detailed account of these:

• Identify Harmful Links: A link auditing company will be able to identify the links that are harmful for the SEO of your site But what are harmful links? These are links that are spam or taken from penalized websites.
• Categorize Inbound Links and Pinpoint Loopholes in the Link Portfolio: In this step, the experts will sort your inbound links keeping their kind, source, and quality link in mind. This is essential because it helps you identify the loopholes in your link portfolio (if any).
• See What Link-Building Efforts Have Been Successful: In this step, we analyze your previous link-building efforts. We will try to understand which among them were successful. Why? You can replicate these efforts for similar results and hence save time in the future.
• Uncover New Link Building Opportunities: As a part of link audits, you will also get to see new possibilities for building links. How? We identify the various websites that align with your industry and are running successfully on search engines. You can approach them for guest posts, etc. and be better at SEO!

What is The Importance of SEO Auditing?

• Find SEO Shortcomings
• Measurability
• Focus Marketing
• Monitor Progress of Keywords Ranking
• Analyze the Competitors

What Are The Benefits of SEO Audits

• Improving website performance
• Content Optimization
• Increased satisfaction of website users
• Better positioning of the website in the search engine
• High traffic on the website

Best 6 Reasons Why You Need an SEO Audit

• Algorithms are always changing
• Page cannot be found
• Mobile optimization and website loading time
• Monitoring your competition
• Ranking of your keywords and progress
• Website traffic insights

Some Essential Checklists to Help You

Here are some important checklists that will prove to be a great help to you.

Importance of the following checklists: When you follow the given checklists, you will be able to successfully optimize your site for search engines like Google. We have included all the necessary practices that contribute to helping to rank higher on search engine result pages.

On-Page Optimization Checklist:

On-page optimization involves making changes to the content of your website as well as its code to ensure that its ranking on the SERPs is enhanced. To help you ace it, here's an on-page optimization checklist for you:

• Meta Descriptions and Heading Tags: When a user searches a keyword and comes across results on the search engine, there are little snippets of text that they are able to see on the SERPs. These snippets help them decide whether or not they wish to click on your website and view it. Now meta descriptions come with a character limit, so they should be clear and concise. Moreover, heading tags provide a structure to your website through which a search engine will be able to index it. Both these are extremely important steps for on-page optimization.
• H1, H2, and Other Header Tags: Your content is divided into sections and subsections. and header tags like H1, H2, etc., are used to highlight the content hierarchy so as to make it easier for users to navigate your pages. H1 is the highest heading, and the significance decreases as you go from H2 to H3, and so on.
• Usage and Relevance of Keywords: The words and phrases that users type in the search box of a search engine are known as keywords. The keywords used in your content should be relevant as well as used in the right amount. This is one of the primary ways to optimize your website for search engines. As a result, users can easily find it when they search for a keyword related to your products or services.
• URL Formatting: Make sure that the URL of your website is short, informative, easy to remember, and has the primary keyword that you wish to target.
• Image Optimization: One of the best tried and tested ways to enhance the experience of your website's users is images. Hence, reducing the size of an image and thus making it easier to load helps you improve the speed and performance of your website. This is the power of image optimization.
• Internal Links: Links that are added from one page of a website to another page of the same website are known as internal links. They help enhance the way your users navigate your website. Moreover, internal links also ensure that the crawlability of search engines on your web pages is optimum.
• Content Quality and Originality: It is important that the content published on your website is well-structured, well-written, free of errors, engaging, and easy to understand. This is how your content will be considered original and of high quality.
• Responsiveness and Mobile Friendliness: As an increasing portion of the population moves to mobile devices to use the internet, the need for your website to be responsive as well as mobile-friendly increases. But what does this mean? It means that the website should be flexible to changing screen resolutions and screen sizes.
• Page Performance and Speed: Be it with respect to UX or SEO, the speed of your website is a crucial aspect. If your site loads too slowly, the visitors will get bored or frustrated. This will lead to the abandonment of your website by its users. Furthermore, search engines like Google will lay penalties on your website due to its slow load speeds. As a result, your search engine optimization efforts will be affected.

Technical SEO Checklist

A technically optimized website can work wonders for your business. That is why it is important to hire a professional technical SEO agency that will ensure that all factors, like crawlability, mobile-friendliness, indexability, security, etc, are taken care of. As a result, you will be able to rank better on search engine result pages or SERPs. Let us have a look at the following technical SEO checklist to check which elements we will optimize for you:

• Sitemap XML: A file that tells the search engines what pages exist on your website is known as the Sitemap XML. When your Sitemap XML file is correct, the crawlability and indexability of your website are optimum.
• Website Crawlability and Indexability: When your site is not crawlable and indexable to search engines, it will not show up in search engine result pages or SERPs. Hence, the crawlability and indexability of your website should definitely be taken care of by an expert in technical SEO.
• Robots.txt File: A file that tells the search engines about which pages must be crawled and which they should refrain from crawling in your website is called the robots.txt file. Suppose you have a page that is not completely ready in terms of design, content, images, or optimization, and you don't want anyone to view it. You can define it in the robots.txt file that the search engines are not allowed to crawl that specific page. Not just incomplete ones, but pages with sensitive information can also be blocked for crawling.
• Duplicate Content: In the instance when the same piece of content appears more than once on the same website or external websites, such content is called duplicate content. As a result of duplicate content, search engines get confused when choosing which page to rank higher in terms of relevance.
• Redirects and Broken Links: The purpose of a redirect is to help the user navigate from one page to another. On the other hand, broken links are links to pages that do not exist anymore. When redirects are incorrect, or links are broken, the visitors of your website have a poor user experience. It also negatively impacts your site's SEO.
• Secure Browing and SSL Certificate: The security certificate responsible for the encryption of data transferred between the browser of a visitor and a website is known as an SSL certificate. But why does a website need encryption? So that the user's data is safe from third parties.
• Structured Data Markup: If you wish to mark the content on your website so as to ensure that search engines like Google are able to understand it in a better way, structured data markup is the way to go. When you use this tool, your website will also show up in featured snippets.
• Architecture and Navigation of Websites: It is necessary for each website to be well-structured and easy to navigate. This is the only way that allows visitors to view it with ease and find the information they are looking for.
• Mobile UX Optimization: The number of people who are using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is increasing by the minute. So, it is important that your website is properly optimized for a better user experience on mobile devices.
• Configuration of the Server and Hosting: Both these factors play a major role in the SEO success of your website. Why? Because they affect the speed of your website and hence the performance. This is a significant factor contributor to the search engine optimization of your website.

Backlink Analysis Checklist

Backlinks are of utmost importance to businesses looking to establish themselves and having better rankings of search engines. But what if you are not sure about the quality and authority of your backlinks? That’s where a backlink analysis checklist comes in! A backlist check or audit will involve an analysis of your existing backlinks and identification of opportunities for building new ones.

If you wish to achieve this for your website, you will have to take care of the following aspects:

• Evaluation of the Backlink Profile: This step involves the analysis of the number of backlinks directing visitors to your website, as well as their quality. If your backlink profile comprises a large number of backlinks from the most authoritative websites, it will be considered a good one.
• Diversity of Anchor Text: The clickable text that links to your website (hyperlink) is called an anchor text. Essentially, if your backlink profile has a vast variety of anchor texts, it will be considered a premium one. As a result, search engines will be able to comprehend the context of each link better.
• Relevance and Quality of the Linked Domains: The websites that link to your site are termed as linked domains. Hence, if your backlink profile has a number of links from well-ranked and relevant websites, you can say that it is a good backlink profile.
• Harmful Backlinks and Spam Backlinks: These are the kinds of backlinks that can affect the search engine optimization of your website adversely. These links are either repetitive, irrelevant, or come from low-quality websites.
• Opportunities and Techniques for Link Building: When you attain backlinks for your own website, the process is called link building. And if you wish to get enough backlinks, you should look out for opportunities. Of course, a large number of techniques exist to achieve this. These include social media, guest blogging, and outreach efforts, among many others.
• Social Media Engagement and Signals: A large number of factors are known to affect the SEO of a website. Social media engagement and signals are also among these. But what exactly do social media signals do? They assist the search engine in determining the popularity of a particular website.
• Online Reputation and Brand Mentions: These factors also affect the SEO of your website to a great extent. Why? Because the overall popularity of a website is among the primary factors that a search engine assesses before ranking it on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Keyword Research Checklist

The process of identification of keywords or phrases that searchers are using to search for pieces of information on the internet is termed keyword research. With the help of effective keyword research, you can write content that is not just informative or engaging for your audience, but also relevant to what they are looking for. Moreover, it can help you rank better on SERPs. But what are the elements that you need to optimize? Let’s know about them in the keyword research checklist below:

• High-volume and Relevant Keywords: Then relevance and volume of keywords are among the main determining factors for the improvement of your website’s SEO. These are basically keywords that are searched for the most number of times and are also relevant to the content of your site, thereby aligning with your products and services. When you target such words and phrases, you will experience an increase in traffic on your website.
• Opportunities of Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords are a unique set of words that are extremely specific. Of course, such keywords are less searched and hence hold less competition. But targeting such keywords is a great way to rank better on search engines. What’s more? You’ll get more targeted traffic to your website, which means higher chances of lead conversions.
• Competitiveness of Keywords: This is a term used to demonstrate the widespread of websites targeting the exact same keywords as you are. If you are using a highly-competitive keyword, it is apparent that the chances of you ranking better on search engine result pages for that keyword are less.
• Search Queries and User Intention: This implies the reason or intention behind a specific search by a user. Let us take an example for an adequate understanding. If someone is looking for different recipes for baking a cake, they will search “cake recipes”. If they want to know the way to make a cake, they will search “how to make a cake”.
• Targeting Local Keywords: This is an optional step depending on your goals. If you are running a local business, it is essential that you target some local keywords alongside the standard ones. Local keywords are ones that people will use to search specific products or services in a specific geographical area, like “bakeries in Thane West” or “bakeries near Viviana Mall”.
• Semantic Variants of Keywords: Now, not every user will search “cakes” on Google. They might also search using the synonyms like “desserts,” “pastries” or even “baked goods” and “sweets”. In this case, you must use semantic variants of primary keywords in your content so as to ensure that the search engine finds you worthy of ranking higher.
• Mapping and Optimization of Keywords: If you wish to optimize your website, you need to organize your keywords and use them in the right places. That is what this step includes. You will use these keywords in titles, descriptions, and other part of your website’s content. You can also hyperlink various pages of your website on the basis of these keywords. As a result, your website will rank higher on search engine result pages.

Content Audit Checklist

The process in which expert auditors analyze content present on a website to check for various factors, such as relevance, quality, and optimization for search engines, is called content auditing. There are many reasons why one might get this done. But the most significant one is for the identification of issues and errors in the content, like outdated or incorrect information, low-quality images, or incorrect use of grammar. Here’s a content audit checklist involving all the necessary elements for you:

• Target Audience Relevant Content: This is the content that aligns with what the target audience of the website is seeking. To its core, the content is informative, interesting, relevant, engaging, and, most importantly, helpful to the target audience.
• Quality and Uniqueness of the Content: Apart from being relevant, it is also essential that the content is of top quality, meaning there are no errors, no grammatical mistakes, and that the content is properly structured. Moreover, it should not be copied from other websites. The uniqueness of your content is what will make you stand out from the crowd.
• SEO-Friendly Formatting (Headings, Subheadings, etc.): You should use headings and subheadings in your content without fail. Why? These make it easy for users to read and scan the content. Moreover, they also help search engines in indexing the content in a better manner.
• Opportunities for Both Internal and External Connectivity: This step involves the use of links to other pages of your website, and also the external links of various other websites. So if a user needs more relevant information on a website, they can easily click the link and gain access to it.
• Keyword Density Optimization: This is an essential step in your keyword journey because the density of the keywords should necessarily be optimum, neither more, nor less. Over-stuffed keywords are something that search engines do not like, and little use of keywords will again deprive your website of higher rankings on the search engine result pages.
• Readability and User Participation: The readability of your content should be very good. What does this mean? It means that the content published on your website should be easy to read and easy to comprehend. Moreover, the chances of user participation should be high. This means, the user should be motivated to leave a comment or to share the content with their acquaintances.
• Freshness and Upkeep of Content: Not only should your content be easy to read, well-structured, and keyword-rich, but it should also be fresh. This means that you should regularly check that all the information on your website is current and correct. It should also be correctly formatted for easier reading.

Local SEO Checklist

The process in which a business or its website is optimized to appear higher in local search result pages is known as local SEO. What does this mean? It means that you are ensuring that whenever someone looks for products or services like yours on the internet, your name appears at the top of search engine result pages. But what elements will you optimize to achieve this? The local SEO checklist given below might help:

• SEO for Google My Business: A free tool that allows you to establish a listing on apps like Google Maps and Google Search is known as Google My Business. But what does this listing entail? Various elements like NAP information (Name, Address, Phone Number) of your business, along with other important details like hours of operation, website, as well as address.
• NAP Consistency (Name, Address, and Phone Number): The correctness as well as consistency of the name, address, and phone number or NAP information of your business on the internet is extremely important. NAP consistency also means that all your online listings have the same details about your business, be it local directories, websites, or Google My Business listing.
• Local Citation Management and Auditing: When the NAP information of your business is mentioned on different websites, these are called local citations. You can effortlessly enhance your local SEO rankings with the help of local citations. Hence, you must consistently analyze your location citations for accuracy and current-ness.
• Management of Online Reputation and Reviews: Any business on the local level relies highly on online reviews and ratings. And so do search engines, because these reviews also affect local SEO rankings. Hence, you must have a specialized unit that will monitor the various online reviews of your business on the internet. Moreover, this special unit should also promptly respond to all kinds of reviews - negative as well as positive.
• Local Keyword Focus: A focus on local keywords is instrumental for the optimization of a website for local searches. Why? People use these keywords to search for products or services that you offer. But how do you find these keywords? By analyzing businesses like yours on Google Maps and conducting thorough area–specific keyword research with the help of the best SEO company.
• Localized Landing Pages and Content: The web pages on your site that are specifically developed, keeping the audience of a specific area in mind, are known as localized landing pages, and the content on these pages is known as localized content.
• Schema Markup for Regional Companies: When you provide structured data on your website, it is known as schema markup. But what is the use of this structured data? It helps search engines apprehend the layout and content of your site. As a result, they will rank you higher and make you more prominent on local search engines.
• Citations and Listings from Local Directories: The various websites that have listings of businesses of a specific geographical area are known as local directories. When you use these local directories to list your business, you end up improving your local SEO rankings. The result? Increased traffic, more conversions, and a handsome ROI.

Analytics and Reporting Checklist

The process in which the data and metrics about a website are collected, analyzed, and reported in an organized manner is known are analysis and reporting. But why do we do this? To keep track of various aspects of an online business, like - website traffic, effectiveness of various marketing campaigns, etc. As a result, we can identify gaps in the existing approach and hence take corrective measures. The following analytics and reporting checklist will give you an idea of what elements you must optimize:

• Installation and Monitoring of Google Analytics: A robust yet free analytical tool by Google that allows you to track the traffic on your website and measure the success of your marketing efforts is known as Google Analytics. So if you wish to keep an eye on what data your website is collecting, installing Google Analytics is an essential step.
• Tracking Goals and Conversions: Each business wants visitors on their websites to take certain actions (which is why they use calls to action in their content). These actions are termed as goals and conversions. Your aim can be anything from customers signing up for your newsletter to purchasing your products. And while it is a good thing to succeed at these, it is also important to track goals and conversions. Why? Because this is an analysis of the performance of your website.
• Analysis of Traffic Sources: The sources through which a user finds out about your website are called traffic sources. Some examples of sources of traffic include - organic searches, paid advertisements, or social media platforms. Analyzing these sources is extremely important for ensuring the long-term success of your website.
• Organic Search Results: The results that naturally appear on search engines like Google when a user types a keyword or phrase in the search box are known as organic search results. If you wish to understand how your keywords are performing and affecting your rankings on search engine result pages, you must monitor your organic search results.
• Monitor Keyword Rankings: Each website employs a specific set of keywords with the aim of improving its SEO. And Google's search results rank your web pages for different keywords. These positions on SERPs are known are keyword rankings. And monitoring these is essential for gaining insights into the performance of your keywords.
• Monitoring and Evaluation of Backlinks: The links from other websites coming to yours are called backlinks. They are a great asset for improving your online presence because they help boost your ranking on SERPs. Hence, it is important to keep an eye on not just the number of backlinks, but also their quality. Moreover, you should also analyze how these backlinks affect your rankings.
• Metrics of User Engagement and Behavior: The measure of how users interact with a certain site on the internet is known as user engagement and behavior metrics. But what do these include? A large number of factors like - time spent on your web page, number of pages viewed per session, as well as the bounce rate. And why track these metrics? To analyze users interactions with your website and improve their overall experience.